After more than a month since Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5 has been released, CentOS 5.5 has finally been released as the community equivalent to the RHEL5.5. CentOS 5.5 is available for both i386 and x86_64 systems and its packages and features match that of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5. This includes new hardware support, run-time memory allocation for KVM guests, EXT4 file-system support, Fibre Channel over Ethernet capabilities, eCryptfs support, and many other new items to assist those running CentOS/RHEL in a server or workstation environment.

“CentOS as a group is a community of open source contributors and users. Typical CentOS users are organisations and individuals that do not need strong commercial support in order to achieve successful operation. CentOS is 100% compatible rebuild of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux, in full compliance with Red Hat’s redistribution requirements. CentOS is for people who need an enterprise class operating system stability without the cost of certification and support.”

Download CentOS 5.5 here
Read the Release Notes here

How to upgrade to CentOS 5.5:

1. BACKUP your system
2. Use the commands below to upgrade:
#yum clean all
#yum update glibc\*
#yum update yum\* rpm\* python\*
#yum clean all
#yum update
#reboot

How to check your system for the new version installed after the reboot.

#lsb_release -a

Popularity: unranked [?]

If the top command shows the processes currently taking the most CPU time and memory, iftop displays network usage by connection making your hosts’ bandwidth moitoring usage easier.  Iftop displays a table of hosts and their bandwidth usage for the past 2, 10 and 40 seconds. Identifying which hosts are causing network congestion is easy using iftop since it displays the pair of hosts responsible for most of the bandwidth on the top of the table.

iftop overview:

• iftop (interface top) derives the name from the standard unix top command. top command displays real-time CPU Usage. iftop command displays real-time network bandwidth usage.
• iftop displays the network usage of a specific interface on the host.
• Using iftop you can identify which host is responsible for slowing down your network.
• To find out which process is causing the problem, note down the port number from the iftop and use netstat -p to identify the process.
• iftop monitors your network activity, and displays a table of current bandwidth.

Download iftop

# cd /root
# wget http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pdw/iftop/download/iftop-0.17.tar.gz

Install iftop

# cd /root
# tar -xzvf iftop-0.17.tar.gz
# cd iftop-0.17
# ./configure
# make
# make install

Use iftop

#iftop

iftop commands

S - display source port
D - display destination port
n - show IP instead of host name
1/2/3 - sort by the specified column
< - sort by source name
> - sort by dest name
P - pause display
j/k - scroll display
? - for help

Popularity: 1% [?]

Red Hat today released the first public beta of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (RHEL 6), the next generation of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 blurs the lines between virtual, physical, and cloud computing to address shifts taking place in the modern IT environment. Featuring updated core technology, from the kernel to the application infrastructure to the development toolchain, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 is designed to meet the needs of the coming generations of hardware and software technologies.

RHEL 6 BETA also comes with comprehensive IPv6 support (NFS 4, CIFS, mobile support [RFC 3775], ISATAP support), FCoE, iSCSI, and a new and improved mac 802.11 wireless stack. Scalability was another focus, ext4 file system provides support for larger file sizes and significantly reduces repair times over ext3. XFS® is a high-performance file system that supports extremely large files and is optimized for large data transfers.  RHEL 6 BETA also has wide support for virtualization.

RHEL 6 Beta comes with both GNOME and KDE 4.3 as default options. Mozilla Firefox 3.5, Mozilla Thunderbird 3 and OpenOffice.org 3.1 also come with RHEL 6 BETA.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Mythdora 12.23 which is based on Fedora 12  has been released. MythDora is aimed at DVR enthusiasts and bundles the popular open-source DVR software MythTV with the latest stable Fedora release.  It also comes with an updated kernel, the Linux kernel 2.6.32.11-99.

System Requirements:

* A minimum of 512MB of RAM is suggested to use the graphical installer
* A hard disk of 15GB in size if you choose to use the default partitioning

General Features:

* Fedora 12 + updates
* mythtv-0.23-rc2+
* kernel 2.6.32.11-99
* lirc-0.8.6-6
* imdb-bulk-update-1.16

DVD Features:

* Gnome,KDE, LXDE, XFCE, and ratpoison desktops
* nvidia driver packages, 195, 173xx and older 96xx
* Handbrake-0.9.4

LiveCD Features:

* XFCE desktop environment
* nvidia-195 driver package
* Ability to change timezone in firstboot’s configuration

Changes in MythDora 12:

* The auto-installation method has been removed
* The frontend now heavily relies on the timezone of the system matching the backend
* mythflix, mythphone and mythstreamtv have been dropped
* Only themes based on the new API are included
* atilibusb and other ir devices are now standardized under the devinput userspace. Note that lircd & lircrc files have changed
* Forced execution of mythdora setup via firstboot so it cannot be missed
* Stock rpmfusion based mythtv packages, settings and themes
* Updated the included firmware for expanded model support

Popularity: 1% [?]

Okay, there are many ways to backup your files in Linux and preserve the permissions and structure. But what is the fastest way to create one? The one line linux command below creates a backup of a directory recursively and preserve the file structure:

root@host# tar -pcvzf mytarball.tar.gz myfiles

WHERE: mytarball.tar.gz is the filename of the compressed backup file and myfiles is the directory you want to back  up.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Well suited for old computers, TinyMe is a small Linux Operating System based on PCLinuxOS, it replaces KDE with Openbox, a small and faster window manager. TinyMe is aimed at making the computing experience as bloat- and lag-free as possible.

The distribution produces two Live CD ISO images which can be installed into a hard drive or a USB flash drive.. The larger, codenamed “Acorn”, is a 200 MB ISO image. The other, “Droplet”, is a 150 MB ISO image.

TinyMe 2010 RC1 is the current test release with the following specifications:

• Kernel 2.6.31.12
• SLiM logs you in
• Pragha, audio player
• AbiWord, a light and fast yet powerful word processor
• Midori, web browser
• Ayttm, instant chat client. Handles IRC, AIM-ICQ, Jabber, LiveJournal, MSN, Yahoo, and even can send e-mails via SMTP.
• Osmo, personal information manager
• Sylpheed, e-mail client
• Viewnior, image viewer
• Recorder, disk burner
• Asunder, a CD ripper
• MtPaint, a basic image editor (also takes screenshots)
• MEdit, a tabbed text editor
• MuPDF, a very small PDF viewer
• Conky, a small system monitor
• Parcellite, a very small clipboard utility
• TightVNC Viewer, view the screen of another computer over a network
• Tilda, a Quake-esque terminal similar to Yakuake– just press F12 to pull down from the top of your screen!

Popularity: 1% [?]